A regional daily’s former deputy sports editor who became one of the “silent victims” of the News of the World phone hacking scandal has penned his debut novel.

Nick Rippington, pictured left, who covered football and boxing for the South Wales Evening Post before going on to a career in the nationals, has released Crossing The Whitewash, a suspense thriller set during the Rugby World Cup.

The novel is described as “gangland London colliding with rugby-crazy Wales against the backdrop of the Rugby World Cup”, with the main character loosely based on a “hard-nosed cockney hack”.

Nick, who still blogs for the Bristol Post, served as the News of the World’s last Welsh sports editor and lost his job when the newspaper was closed down in the wake of the scandal.

He told the Evening Post: “It’s amazing to think four years have passed since the News of the World closed its doors..

“I’d moved from Wales to work for the News of the World because it was my dream job and I really wanted to test myself.

“Then Rupert Murdoch closed down the paper while I was on holiday and what followed was a bit like a spy novel in itself.

“I wasn’t allowed back into the building and had to meet a former colleague of mine in a car park in Wapping in order to pick up my possessions.”

Nick used his time in Wapping as an inspiration for the book, but told the Bristol Post he considers himself one of the “silent victims” of the scandal.

He told the Post: “One person in particular, who had a strong cockney accent, used to ask me when I arrived on a Thursday morning ‘What’s goin’ on in Wales then, Rippers?’ I would start to tell him about the fortunes of the rugby team or one of the football sides and while I was in mid-sentence he would mutter ‘no one’s interested’ and wander off.

“It gave me the germ of an idea about how a dyed-in-the-wool London geezer with no idea about what goes on in Wales would handle being transplanted to the valleys, and it developed from there.”